After spending over 50 years on and around the water, I have realized that without strong fisheries laws and effective conservation measures, the future of salt water fishing, and America's living marine resources, is dim. Yet conservation is given short shrift by national angling organizations and the angling press. I hope that this blog will incite, inform and inspire salt water fishermen to reclaim their traditional role as the leading advocates for the conservation of America's fisheries.

Thursday, August 20, 2015

SOMETHING IN THE WATER

There are a lot of refineries and chemical plants near the
New Jersey coast, and it wasn’t too long ago that the Delaware River, which runs along the western border of that state, was so polluted that anadromous fish
had to think twice before trying to make it upstream.

Sometimes, after coming away from a fisheries management
meeting, you have to wonder whether some of that sort of stuff is getting into
the state’s drinking water, because it’s hard to come up with any better explanation
of why New Jersey is so often radically out of step with fisheries managers
from the rest of the coast when it comes to conserving fish stocks.

However, the 28-inch minimum size had prevailed on the coast
since 1995, and biologists suggested that, from a statistical standpoint, it
made sense to leave the size limit alone.
Managers took that advice and adopted such size limit which, coupled
with a 1-fish bag, would probably reduce landings by about 31%, comfortably
above the 25% reduction that was the minimum needed to reduce fishing mortality
to the target level.

Thus, a motion was also made that would require that if any
state proposed alternate regulations, such regulations would have “conservation
equivalency” to one fish at 28 inches; that is, they would have to reduce
landings by 31%.

Unfortunately, ASMFC
had earlier voted to reduce coastal harvest by 25%, and the New Jersey
commissioners would not let that go. Tom
Fote, the state’s governor’s appointee, objected loudly, saying

“We just voted on a 25 percent reduction; and now because
you’re picking out one fish at 28 inches, you’re basically saying that we have
to have a 31 percent reduction, which is 6 percent greater than we voted on and
we went through the plan. This makes no
sense whatsoever…

“It might be perfectly acceptable for [another state’s]
fishermen to have one fish at 28; and that is great, let them go one fish at
28; but we have to accommodate the fishermen in our state, the charterboat, the
partyboat and the recreational guys, and the guys that fish from the
beach. We need that flexibility as long
as we make the 25 percent reduction. I
didn’t [vote?] for a 31 percent reduction; I don’t think anybody around this
table voted for a 31 percent reduction…”

For whatever reason, the management board went along, and
ended up passing a motion that read

“to approve Option B-1, one fish at 28 inches, with all
conservation equivalent measures equaling a 25 percent or greater reduction in
harvest.”

It seemed that the New Jersey folks got what they wanted,
but when the roll-call vote was taken, they
still decided to vote against…

It didn’t take long to see where New Jersey was headed when it argued for the smallest possible harvest reduction, for
in the months to come, when representatives of the northeastern states came together in an
effort to maintain constant regulations throughout the region, all of the
states from Maine to New York agreed on one fish at 28 inches for
everyone. But New Jersey went its own
way, playing with the numbers until they could find a way for their anglers to
take not one striped bass, nor even two, on every trip, but three, one measuring between
28 and 43 inches, one at least 43 inches in length and, beginning on September 1 of
this year, a third fish between 24 and 28 inches in length--a fish that, most
likely, had never had even one chance to spawn.

Thus, while anglers in most other coastal states may take
home only one adult fish, in New Jersey, they get
to kill one average adult fish, one prime spawner and one immature bass that will
never get to contribute to the future of the stock.

Because down in New Jersey, any fish is a good one as long
as it’s dead…

That being the case, I wasn’t surprised to see, in the wake
of the joint Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council/Atlantic States Marine
Fisheries Commission decision to reduce summer flounder landings, that the
Recreational Fishing Alliance, a New Jersey organization if there ever was one,
put out a press release condemning such action.

The title was typical bluster: “Vote to torpedo recreational
fishing community. Council and
Commission turn deaf ear to floundering industry.” Even so, it was better than the text, which
was little more than an extended, petulant whine, lamenting that the Council
and ASMFC followed the scientific advice to reduce summer flounder landings in
the face of a population decline.

To be fair, there weren’t any flagrant untruths in the
release, although it skipped over so many important facts that the whole truth
was still hard to find.

For example, it
lambastes the Council for making a 29% landings cut, while ignoring the fact
that a 43% cut was originally proposed, but Council and Commission staff,
working with the members of both management organizations, found a way to pare
that down by one-third in order to reduce any resulting economic pain.

That’s hardly turning a deaf ear to industry concerns.

The release says that

“12 members voted in opposition to a measure that would have
led to a smaller, 20% overall reduction,”

which is true, but it failed to mention that the Council was
legally barred from adopting harvest cuts any smaller than those recommended by
its Science and Statistical Committee, which endorsed the 29% reduction.

Yes, there was a motion to remand the
question to the SSC for further consideration, but that motion was essentially
out of order, as it lacked any of the substantial grounds (SSC error, etc.)
needed to justify such a remand.

Even had a remand occurred, the only way that the SSC
could have limited harvest reductions to 20% would be to find that the science
in the latest stock assessment was perfect—that there was no scientific
uncertainty at all. And everyone--most particularly the SSC--knows
that is not true.

The bottom line is that the 29% reduction was in accord with
the best available science, and was clearly the right thing to do. It was overwhelmingly supported by Council
and Committee members.

The effort to limit harvest reductions to 20% was
effectively a New Jersey effort.

With respect to the Council, the motion to remand the
question to the SSC was made by Jeffrey Kaelin, of the New Jersey
delegation. The motion failed with only
5 votes in favor. Three of those votes
were from New Jersey.

With respect to the Commission, the motion to remand the
question was made by Tom Fote, the governor’s appointee from New Jersey. The motion failed when only New Jersey voted
in support.

And even in the public comment period that preceded the
vote, all three spokesmen who supported the remand came from—you guessed it—New
Jersey.

Because no state but New Jersey tries so hard to kill so many fish. They seem constitutionally unable to comprehend conservation.

I’m not sure why that is.

I’ve spoken with folks from New Jersey--even have a handful of friends down there--who seem like normal
people, with a normal desire to properly manage the fish that we pursue.

But I also know a lot of the folks who represent New Jersey on regional panels and in public
forums, and they’re a completely separate breed, always trying to eke out a few more dead
fish, regardless of the health of the population.

Maybe there’s something seeping into the water they drink that makes
them think so perversely.

I don’t know about that.

But I do know that if they get their way, with stripers or
weakfish, with fluke or with flounder, there will be a lot less in the water
for folks to catch.